A not so run of the mill .mil account?

15 Sep 2010

I grew up with a common last name. It was Hispanic, but definitely a Smith or Jones equivalent. People might not have spelled it correctly or butchered the pronunciation more times than I expected, but it didn't bother me too much. I never thought I would take my husband's last name when I married, but when it came time I did. Seadaddy does not have a common last name. It almost always requires spelling and pronunciation assistance. No big deal. A few weeks ago Seadaddy called me from work asking that I resend an email to him at his .mil account. He couldn't quite remember if his email address was firstname.lastname or firstname.middleinitial.lastname. I probably could have waited for him to work it out in his head or look somewhere, but quickly sent it to both. A few hours later there was a very awesome email from a Retired Master Chief that owned the firstname.lastname .mil account in Seadaddy's inbox. Because of the content of the email I resent to Seadaddy, the Master Chief was more than a little happy to send a quick word and deliver some Salty Old Sailor words of advice. It.was.awesome. At the time, I seemed way more excited about this unintentional introduction to a fellow sailor that shared Seadaddy's name.

Fast forward a couple weeks (and a couple reminders from me) and Seadaddy exchanged a couple emails and had a long phone call going over his namesake's Naval career. He received some really great advice for the rest of his time in the Navy and heard a few quality sea stories. It has been a truly awesome thing. One of the best parts of this meeting was learning that Seadaddy was not the first namesake in the Retired Master Chief's life. And the story on that was great! It involved a SEAL's girlfriend showing up at his house looking for her man with his wife getting just a little upset and a two year wait to find out he was stationed at the same place as another sailor who shared his name and the accompanying apology from his wife. Too too funny! Does anyone else have any .mil email account stories?